Vendome Pictures Cooks Up Dramatic Film Based on Revolutionary Chef Ferran Adrià and His World-Famous elBulli RestaurantLos Angeles, CA February 13, 2013 – Vendome Pictures announced today that it has come on board to produce and finance EL BULLI, a fictionalized dramatic feature film based on world-famous Spanish chef Ferran Adrià and the restaurant he built into the world's foremost gastronomic mecca, elBulli. David Wilson wrote the screenplay which is inspired by Lisa Abend's book The Sorcerer's Apprentices: A Season in the Kitchen at Ferran Adrià's elBulli.

Vendome Pictures' CEO Philippe Rousselet will produce the project along with Jeff Kleeman and John Lesher. Vendome is currently seeking a director with plans to commence production this year.

Rousselet stated, "We are excited to be a part of this film and to work with an innovator like Ferran who has revolutionized cuisine by creating his own genre of food. We look forward to attaching a director to this film that will be able to capture the adventure of training in this iconic restaurant."

"Honesty, passion, creativity, freedom, risk, and sharing. This is the spirit of elBulli and this film is a tribute to the 2,000 individuals who passed through the restaurant during its 25 years who participated in creating this spirit," said Adrià.

Set in the final year of the iconic restaurant located 100 miles north of Barcelona, the film will mix fact with fiction and offer an inside-the-kitchen look at the intense passion, creativity and tedious work unfolding nightly. Adrià abruptly closed this mecca in 2011 at the height of its popularity, triggering global mourning in the gastronomic community. At that time, elBulli was fielding 2 million reservation requests a year, but could only serve about 8,000 guests.

In 2014, elBulli will re-open as the elBullifoundation, a center dedicated to culinary creativity and innovation. Located on the site of the restaurant, the foundation will be housed in a new campus that is both architecturally striking, and energy sustainable. While it will preserve elBulli's historic archive, the foundation will also focus on experimentation, treating cooking as a language through which new ideas can be expressed. One of its first projects is Bullipedia, an encyclopedia of cuisine in which Adrià and his collaborators will trace the DNA of cooking and organize collective knowledge about products, techniques, preparations, and concepts.

In her book The Sorcerer's Apprentices: A Season in the Kitchen at Ferran Adrià's elBulli, Abend spent the 2009 six-month season at elBulli showcasing the interpersonal drama behind elBulli's notoriously rigorous kitchen training program. Each year, 32 accomplished young chefs – culled from 3,000 hopefuls from around the world – would pay their own way to get to elBulli's remote Costa Brava location just to work as stagiares (translation: "kitchen apprentices"). In Adrià's kitchen, they were pushed to their competitive limits in a 14-hour-a-day Darwinian process designed to sift out the chefs capable of working in a restaurant voted the world's best five times, spearheaded by a celebrity chef who has three Michelin stars and who has appeared in almost every major publication on the planet.

Wilson's most recently adapted THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. for Warner Bros

Vendome's President of Production, Guy Stodel, and Vice President of Production and Development, Sarah Schweitzman, will oversee the project on behalf of Vendome.

Wilson is represented by Field Entertainment and The Gersh Agency.

My wine shopping and I have never had a problem. Just a perpetual race between the bankruptcy court and Hell.--Rogov

"Nothing has been decided yet," said Adrià before getting into any of the questions at hand. "I haven't even been in touch with the producer these past few days," he added. But it's inevitable, he confirmed, that elBulli will reopen in some capacity. The chef believes that beyond getting a feel for how the kitchen worked at the restaurant, the actors need to understand what service — and a night in general — was like when the restaurant was in operation. "That doesn't happen with hiring more actors to come in to eat," said the chef. "It happens with regular diners coming in to enjoy a meal, with the expectations that they are going to have the elBulli experience — it can't be a simulacrum." Whether it's going to take place in California or Spain is up to the producer and director.

Whenever the restaurant reopens, there won't be reservations. "We don't know how we'll do it yet," he said. An earlier report suggested that there would be a lottery system or perhaps the restaurant team and filmmakers would just invite a group of friends, but Adrià said nothing has been established yet. "Any way we do it," said Adrià, "a lot of people will want to come." The chef is willing to make it happen for as long or as short a time as the filmmakers need. "We're here to do anything and everything to make this work for them," he said.

Adrià explained that in addition to training actors in the elBulli kitchen, he hopes to send them to other high-end restaurants. He mentioned potentially enlisting the help of colleagues like Grant Achatz (Alinea, Chicago), Joan Roca (El Celler de Can Roca, Girona), and Andoni Luis Aduriz (Mugaritz, San Sebastian), so the actors can understand what goes on in restaurants of elBulli's caliber and ambition. "I really hope José Andrés will be an important part of this, because he was with our team for so long and is a good communicator," added Adrià.

The decision to turn to colleagues with restaurants currently in operation makes sense: Adrià said that even though this isn't going to be a documentary, "it isn't going to be a biopic, either." The chef sees it as a work of fiction that uses elBulli's last year to show people the excitement, stress, and action that go into a restaurant operation like this. "Most people don't know the professionalism and pressure that go into it," he said. Though he emphasized the dramatic and fictional aspects of the work, Adrià did explain that he hopes the film's focus on the final year of the restaurant will explain the reasons for the transformation of his famed restaurant into a non-profit institution focused on creativity.

The transformation begins next month, when the first phase of construction on elBulli Foundation begins. It wraps up at the end of September. "That leaves October to February for us to be able to film there," said Adrià, confirming that the film will likely shoot in the fall of 2013 and early winter of 2014. The second phase of construction begins after February 2014.

With no director yet, there are bound to be several changes and announcements to come. But Adrià is sure of one thing: "I want the film to premiere at the elBulli Foundation. It would be beautiful if this was the first thing we did there."

My wine shopping and I have never had a problem. Just a perpetual race between the bankruptcy court and Hell.--Rogov